James Surowiecki writes fine columns, and this
one is no exception. But he's got the story of the effects of the Black
Death on serfdom backwards. He - and anyone else curious about history
- should read Evsey
Domar's classic 1970 paper "The causes of slavery or serfdom:
a hypothesis." (Sorry, doesn't seem to be available online.)

Here's what Surowiecki says: "The Black Death helped undermine feudalism.
The population decline was so severe that the individualís labor grew more
valuable, which enabled serfs to abandon their lords and become tenant
farmers or urban workers. " That sounds plausible, but it's not the way
it happened. According to Domar, serfdom actually withered away before
the Black Death, as European population grew close to its Malthusian limit.
The puzzle is why serfdom wasn't reinstituted after the Black Death.

Domar was motivated by his knowledge of Russian history. Serfdom in
Russia, he knew, wasn't an institution that dated back to the Dark Ages.
Instead, it was mainly a 16th-century creation, contemporaneous with the
beginning of the great Russian expansion into the steppes. Why?

He came up with a simple yet powerful insight: there's no point in enslaving
or enserfing a man unless the wage you would have to pay him if he was
free is substantially above the cost of feeding, housing, and clothing
him.

Imagine a pre-industrial society where population is pressing on limited
land supplies, and the marginal product of labor - and hence the real wage
rate under competitive conditions - is barely at subsistence. In that case,
why bother establishing property rights in human beings? It costs no more
to hire a free worker than to feed an indentured laborer. Indeed, by 1300
- with Europe very much a Malthusian society - serfdom had withered away
from lack of interest.

But now suppose that for some reason land becomes abundant, and labor
scarce. Then competition among landowners will tend to push up wages of
free workers, and the ruling class will try, if it can, to pin peasants
down and prevent them from bargaining for a higher standard of living.
In Russia, it was all about gunpowder: suddenly steppe nomads were no longer
so formidable, and the rich lands of the Ukraine were open for settlement.
Serfdom was an effort to keep peasants from taking advantage of this situation.
(And if I've got it right, those who were venturesome enough to run away
and set up outside the system became Cossacks.)

Meanwhile, the New World opened in the west. Sure enough, the colonizing
powers tried various forms of indentured servitude - making serfs of the
Indians in Spanish territories, bringing over indentured servants in Virginia.
But eventually they hit on a better solution, from their point of view:
importing slaves from Africa.

Here's the puzzle. In Europe circa 1100, with population scarce, serfdom
was useful to the ruling class. By 1300 it wasn't, and had been allowed
to drift away. But after 1348 it should have been worthwhile again. Yet
it wasn't effectively reimposed. There were attempts to restrain wages
and limit labor mobility, as well as attempts to tax the peasants (Wat
Tyler's rebellion fits into all this.) But all-out feudalism didn't return.
Why?

And an even bigger question: why hasn't indentured servitude made a
comeback in the modern era? Yes, I know, human rights and all that - but
if it was profitable to have indentured servants in the modern world, I'm
sure that Richard Scaife's think tanks would have no trouble finding justifications,
and assorted Christian groups would explain why it's God's will.

Anyway, have to get back to real work. But try to find a copy of Domar's
paper and read it.